Battered Immigrant Women and the Police: A Canadian Perspective

Since the 1970s, the state response to intimate partner violence (IPV) has increasingly become one of criminalization—particularly police intervention. Little is known, however, about marginalized women’s experiences with the police within a context of intimate partner violence in Canada. Drawing on interviews with 90 battered immigrant women, this study examines which women contact the police, why some do not, and what characterizes their experiences when the police are involved in an IPV incident. This study demonstrates that while the women who called the police were demographically similar to those who did not call, the women who called reported much greater levels of physical abuse. Findings indicate that general fear of the police and fear of police being racist or culturally insensitive continue to be important reasons why women do not call the police. Notably, the majority of women who had contact with the police reported the encounter as positive.